HARTFORD, Conn. — A man alleges that police entered his home illegally and ripped a catheter
from his body during a child pornography investigation that led to the arrest of two neighbors.

Andrew Glover, 60, of New Britain filed a notice with the city Thursday that he intends to pursue a
federal civil rights lawsuit. He accused the officers of inflicting severe injuries as he was recovering
from intestinal surgery in February.

The poor guy, Spinella said. They ripped the catheter off his person. They assaulted
the guy. He’s got major problems as a result of this. He’s a mess now.

Lt. James Wardwell, a police spokesman, said Friday that the department had not received the
intent-to-sue notice and would not comment. A message was left for the city’s corporation counsel.

Glover has two years to file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court.

Spinella said officers tossed Glover’s apartment during a search Jan. 30. In February, he
said, Glover returned home from the hospital after his surgery to find officers searching his
apartment again. That’s when they assaulted Glover and left him alone in the apartment without
calling for medical help, Spinella said.

Meanwhile, in Kamloops, British Columbia, in order to subdue a frail 82 year old man, on an oxygen tank, who had undergone heart bypass surgery, who could not hurt anyone outside the reach of a small knife, cops were willing to blast him three times in the chest with a 50,000-volt electric shock while he lay helpless in his hospital bed. Because they had work to get done that night:

An elderly man in Kamloops, B.C., was zapped three times on the torso by a police stun gun while
lying on his hospital bed, CBC News has learned.

Frank Lasser, 82, appeared fragile Thursday when he showed the Taser marks on his body and
talked about the ordeal he went through Saturday.

They [police] should have known I had bypass surgery, Lasser told CBC News.

Lasser has had heart surgery and needs to carry an apparatus to supply oxygen at all times. He
was in the Royal Inland Hospital Saturday due to pneumonia but has since been released.

RCMP said nurses called police after Lasser became delirious and pulled a knife out of his pocket.

Lasser told CBC News that he sometimes becomes delusional when he can’t breathe properly. He
said he couldn’t explain why he refused to let go of the knife even after the Mounties arrived.
I was laying on the bed by then and the corporal came in, or the sergeant, I forget which it
was, and said to the guys, OK, get him because we got more important work to do on the
street tonight, Lasser said.

And then, bang, bang, bang, three times with the laser, and I tell you, I never want that
again.

Kamloops RCMP said Thursday that officers had no other option but to deploy the conducted energy
weapon when Lasser refused to drop his knife.

In Philadelphia, a police commissioner says that, while On the surface, it certainly does not look good, people should not rush to judgment over an aerial video which clearly shows a swarm of Philadelphia police officers dragging suspects out of a car, then repeatedly beating and kicking them while they lay handcuffed and held down on the ground. Remind me again of how the good guys who do this are morally any different from the Bloods or the Crips?

The reason that you should suspend your judgment on this vicious gang beat-down of helpless, restrained suspects by a huge crowd of the Gangsters in Blue is that The video is the video … We have no audio. You don’t know what was going on at that moment when the officers approached the vehicle. There will be an investigation and we will move on.

Well. I am sure that after The Matter Is Investigated, and nothing of any consequence happens to these dangerous, heavily armed, tightly-organized gangs of batterers, the Philadelphia Police Department and city government sure will move on, with business as usual, and not a damn thing will change. Besides which, think of how hard the poor cops have it when a fellow cop was killed on the job not long ago. Because those trained professionals who, at every opportunity, sanctimoniously inform us of all the risks that they voluntarily take on For Our Own Good, cannot possibly be expected to do their jobs without beating the shit out of helpless captives if it should ever happen that one of them is hurt or killed. This is how these dedicated public servants serve and protect the public: by hurting innocent or helpless people under their power, by taking out the stress and risks of their own chosen profession on members of the public who pose no threat to them, and then by lying, dissembling, making excuses, and crying about it if anyone should happen to take issue with this reign of terror being carried on by peace officers in the name of Public Safety. Cops are here to protect you. Cops are here to protect the hell out of you, whether you want it or not, and you had better not get in the way.

When every fucking week brings another story of a Few More Bad Apples causing Yet Another Isolated Incident, and the police department almost invariably doing everything in its power to conceal, excuse, or minimize the violence, even in defiance of the evidence of the senses and no matter how obviously harmless or helpless the victim may be, it beggars belief to keep on claiming that there is no systemic problem here, that cops ought to be given every benefit of the doubt, and that any blanket condemnation of American policing is a sign of hastiness and unfair prejudice. The plain fact is that what we have here is one of two things: either a professionalized system of control which tacitly permits and encourages cops to exercise this kind of rampant, repeated, intense, and unrepentant abuse against powerless people—or else a system which has clearly demonstrated that it can do nothing effectual to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

Coalitions of the Willing

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